IDEO Creates a Gorgeous App for Making Movies on Your iPhone

Spark is IDEO's new video recording app for the iPhone. It's lightweight with a few key, powerful features. Image: IDEO

One is the tap-to-record interaction, pioneered by Vine, that makes it exceedingly simple to string together multi-part sequences. Image: IDEO

The app also lets you add filters and add a soundtrack to your clip. Image: IDEO

But two other, less obvious things distinguish it from video-making brethren like Instagram and Vine: you don't haveto share what you create, and you can revisit and rework projects later. Image: IDEO

"I think we can complement other video sharing services," says Dominique Yahyav, the IDEO designer who led the project. Image: IDEO

"I think that what I really see this app as is your video camera. This is your video camera to capture your moments. Then you can go share them." Image: IDEO

The best thing about Vine, without a doubt, is its tap-to-shoot interface. With that one ingenious interaction, the app brought the power of the cut to the smartphone-wielding masses, transforming interminable home movies into surprisingly rich little films. The worst thing about Vine is having to put stuff on Vine. The price you pay for using the incredible movie-making tool is being forced to broadcast yourself on its network. Thankfully, now we have Spark Camera, a $2 app from renowned design studio IDEO that gives you the same glorious one-finger-movie-making functionality–and some other good stuff–without any obligation to share when you’re done.

The app was IDEO’s answer to a straightforward question: how can we give people a simple way to make great looking videos on a smartphone? Its carefully selected feature set is all about giving you things you need to create meaningful mini-movies without slowing you down. Open the app and you’re ready to shoot straight away–there’s nothing pestering you for any login credentials. In familiar Vine fashion, a finger on the screen is all you need to string together a series of shots, with a maximum length of 30 seconds. Then you can apply one of 10 filters to the clip and add a soundtrack from your phone’s stash of tunes. The whole thing gets saved to your camera roll in full 720p with options for sharing on all the usual suspects.

Spark’s clearly trying to find the sweet spot between simplicity and functionality. All three of its main components–the ability to easily make videos with multiple shots; the filters; and the ability to add a soundtrack–are transformative enough that you’ll probably use them for everything you make in the app. Still, Spark’s definitely more of a place to record video than edit it–there’s no way to move or remove shots within a clip, for example–though that quickly gets into unwieldy territory. One thing the app should let you do, though, is pick what part of a song you want to add to your project. Right now, it just stubbornly starts every musical selection up from the top.

Still, it feels like Spark gets a lot of things right. It’s as lightweight and easy to use as the iPhone’s stock camera app but ultimately far more powerful. And one key way it sets itself apart from other lightweight video-making apps is that it lets you revisit and rework old clips at any time–to swap in a new filter, try out a new tune, or tack a new bit of video onto the end of the sequence. With Spark, you can have an on-going project for a road trip while jumping out to do a new vignette for every individual rest stop along the way. “At first it’s not really clear that it’s a feature of the app,” says Dominique Yahyav, the IDEO designer who led the effort. But it’s an important distinction that elevates Spark from a tool that captures moments to one that’s suited for making longer, broader video memories. “That’s something we thought was limiting with Instagram and Vine,” Yahyav says.

In the end, though, the best thing about Spark might be the simple fact that it lets you do your thing in private. Whereas Instagram and Vine funnel your efforts onto their servers and into your the feeds of your friends, Spark stashes your videos safely on your camera roll. “A lot of these moments can be very personal, and we don’t necessarily want them to be publicly shared with a network,” Yahyav says. If you’ve ever felt a little bit uneasy about how completely creation and publication have become intertwined with today’s digital tools, you’ll appreciate the sentiment; it’s reassuring to see an app that defaults to saving, not sharing. “I think we can complement other video sharing services,” Yahyav explains. “I think that what I really see this app as is your video camera. This is your video camera to capture your moments. Then you can go share them.”